Twinkee

I live in New York City, a major publishing hub for literary fiction and poetry and home to an elite academic literary tradition that is rapidly losing its relevance in broader American culture. It was once a serious career aspiration of mine to participate in that tradition, and I have since soured on it.

During my time in that world, I was struck by the truth of the Dunning-Kruger curve. For scholars and writers both, the people who churned out smug thinkpieces rife with obscurantist references to 19th century continental philosophy and did confident podcasts on subjects on which they had no experience and took on stereotypical romantic literary affectations to impress members of their desired sex were all dilettantes. The timid, anxiety-ridden wrecks who struggled with their work and constantly worried they weren’t smart enough, because they were daunted by how much they still had left to understand—those were the real geniuses.

I once had an odd, ambiguously romantic relationship with a literature grad student who sounded just like Ogre, but instead of Joyce it was Deleuze. And instead of a hulking monster she was a socially awkward 5’1 woman, which is somehow no more or less endearing, but every bit as powerful. She’d be intimidated by Vice freelancer types name-dropping Deleuze to talk about rhizomes in Twin Peaks or whatever, and then, stammeringly and bewilderedly, would intellectually wreck them.